Summer Night Lights provides a positive environment

LONG BEACH - Juan Arriaga lives only two blocks from Martin Luther King Jr. Park, but he and his friends rarely went there.

"We'd go to Signal Hill because of the gangs," the 2012 Poly High grad said.

That has changed since the Summer Night Lights program was initiated at the Central Long Beach park two years ago. The program, which keeps Martin Luther King Jr., Drake and Admiral Kidd parks open late through summer, was created to reduce youth violence and provide enrichment to kids and their families by providing a safe place to congregate, eat and interact, take classes and play sports.

"It used to be just one (ethnic) race here," Arriaga, 18, said of the park. "Now we talk to each other and help each other out. It's a positive."

Summer Night Lights has also provided a venue for Long Beach police to meet kids and teens in a positive setting.

"Everyone comes together and has fun with the police," Arriaga said. "You get a different side of the police."

Surrounded by about 40 teens in bright yellow T-shirts that read "2012 Long Beach Summer Lights Youth Squad," city leaders met Monday morning to announce the kickoff of the third year of the program.

Modeled after a program by the same name in Los Angeles that began in 2008, Long Beach's Summer Night Lights keeps the three parks open from 6-9 p.m. weekdays. The $400,000 program employs 30 kids and 20 adults, and last year recorded 15,000 visits by area kids. And those are just the ones who chose to sign in.

A number of city safety officials and political leaders attended Monday's kickoff.

City Councilman Dee Andrews played up the hiring of youths in the program, while City Councilman James Johnson talked about taking the streets back from gang members.

Jessica Quintana, the executive director of Centro CHA who manages the summer program, has the job of cobbling together the different private and nonprofit funding sources, for the program.

In regards to the cost, she said if the program stops one kid from being shot in a dispute, it pays for itself.

The Los Angeles program, which is much larger and better funded, keeps parks open until midnight six nights a week. Officials claim that in 2010, the program resulted in a 57 percent decline in gang homicides and a 55 percent drop in shootings.

Long Beach Police Chief Jim McDonnell is a big proponent of programs like Summer Night Lights. He said it allows cops to get back to the community policing style of enforcement that has been lost in the current era of budget cuts, and also spend time in other areas such as cyber crime and terrorism.

"Those have taken resources away from our core service," McDonnell said. "The main part (of policing) is it's a people business.

At Summer Night Lights programs, the police play soccer and hoops with the kids and grill hamburgers, among other activities.

"This allows us to get out one-on-one in nonthreatening ways," McDonnell said. "This way we can help shape the perceptions of the leaders of the future."